


Making the Eight

by Silberias



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eight ways Jon Snow grows up a bastard and one way he doesn't, F/M, Gen, Jon grows up in Dorne, Jon grows up in the North, Lyanna doesn't make it guys I'm sorry, R Plus L Equals J, Rhaegar still catches a hammer to the face, Various people finding Lyanna in the tower, forgive any out of character stuff I literally wrote almost all of this in a haze yesterday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-06 14:19:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15887763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: Eight ways Jon Snow grows up a bastard + one way he doesn't.





	1. Jon Snow

**Author's Note:**

> So I was reading another story that I had thought was going pretty well until I realized that I was getting bored with it and wondering what would have happened if Ned had tried a bit more to lie to Catelyn in a way she might believe him. 
> 
> So here we go! At first it was going to be a stub about "one simple change changes a lot" with just Ned's lie to Catelyn, and then I got to thinking "Hey, what if..." and that led to another "hey what if..." and so on. 
> 
> I hope you like each chapter! Please let me know what you think!

It was a cruel dishonesty to his wife but Ned felt that he had to do it. The babe was too old, obviously too old, to have been his own child. The lie might hold in the North but it would not hold in the South, and it was from the South he must protect the child. Distance alone would be but a poor shield. So he put dishonor on the dead, who would have the benefit of knowing all that he could not tell his living wife. 

"The babe is Brandon's bastard, by the Lady Ashara Dayne. She had hoped...she had hoped dark things for you, and for Robb, and threw herself from a tower when I told her those hopes would not be fulfilled. Her father asked that I take the child away from Dorne, it was too painful to keep him."

"She meant for him to steal the birthright of a true born son," Catelyn said, her voice strained and frigid and frightened. Jon Snow had the look of a Northman, while Robb Stark had the look of a soft southron lordling--even in their cradle it was plain to see. There was a great risk by bringing this bastard back to the North, but Ned had no other options. He had to be seen taking in "Brandon's" bastard, even if he fostered him away there had to be the foundation of the lie. The child had to have come from somewhere. 

"Yes. I am sorry my brother dishonored..."

"Do not speak ill of the dead," she interrupted him sharply, her eyes shining with tears for just a moment. His wife was not a soft southron lady for all her graces and gentle ways--there was a core of ice inside all her fire. She had loved Brandon, in her way, and had lost him on account of a Stark's indiscretions--she just did not truly know which Stark. It was kinder for her to feel that the answers were taken from her by her god of death--Brandon Stark and Ashara Dayne were beyond her ability to question, and the truth of Jon Snow's conception and origin would remain safely obscured. 

"He is all Brandon left us--left  me \--save his title, it seems, so I do not object to him being raised here," she continued, grief coloring her voice, "but when he turns sixteen he must be sent away. I don't care or suggest where. But for now we...we shall not punish him for his father's actions."

At this Ned dared put a bracing hand on her shoulder. They were not yet close enough for him to reach out and gather her up in his arms, but he could offer some comfort. An assurance he was here, and he would stay right here with her unlike his elder brother.  I am sorry, Brandon, to make you guilty of Lyanna's sins .  I am sorry, Ashara, to create Rhaegar's greed in your gentle heart. Catelyn bowed her head and whimpered out a few tears, whispering "he should have been my son. I love Robb, I do, and I will always be loyal to you, but this boy...he should have been mine."

"I know, my lady, it is why I submitted to Lord Dayne's wishes and brought him here. You have a right to know of him."

"What did she name him?" the question caught him off-guard. Ned had not expected her to take any interest in the child other than fury. 

"Rickard, for his grandfather," he decided on eventually, "probably to encourage Brandon's affections towards the child. I have been calling him Jon after Jon Arryn, the other is too painful."

"I would not allow him to be called Rickard. He is not a Stark and will not receive a Stark name. Jon is perfectly fine. Jon Snow, to conceal his mother's ambitions for him."

* * *

Jon Snow grows up painfully aware of the strange jealousy Lady Stark holds for him. He whose birth stole the title of "first born son of House Stark," from her Robb but she also viewed him has having been stolen from her directly--Brandon Stark had put her son into the wrong woman. When he is sixteen she cries and weeps that he is choosing to make his life as a trader with his uncle Benjen in Braavos, but he still goes for he knows Winterfell was never meant for one such as him.  



	2. Jon Rivers

Howland Reed returned from the war with a bastard--a mercy, many said in gossip about him, for to trail it behind would be to infect the world with his crannogman blood. Lord Stark returned with much more precious cargo--the bones of his dead sister and the tiny ones of her stillborn child. The babe's bones were hardly bigger than pigeon bones and ones that had caused King Robert to scream himself hoarse when he saw the box. Dornish cedar and intricately carved with moons and mountains, it had been the sewing box of Lady Ashara Dayne before her death. Now it held the bones of a Targaryen bastard. 

"How--How did that dragon kill her, what horrible thing did those knights do to her on his order?" Robert was bellowing. Had been bellowing. Would likely continue bellowing.

"They would not send for a maester, that is what they did to her, but the midwife said it was not to be helped. She said your seven gods took my sister for her wickedness." Ned kept his voice low for it wobbled with his grief if he spoke properly and loudly.

"Dornish slattern." 

Ned ignored the comment and doggedly continued as his king had ordered him.

"Lya died before the child...before the child was birthed. Something within her tore open and she bled out from the inside. The child was backward and drowned in the...in the blood. It was a son, Rhaegar's son," he murmured, "as silvery as his father once he was washed. She was so scared, but before she slipped away from me she asked if...if there had been justice. I told her...I told her yes. That you gave her justice."

He was telling lies, painful but painfully necessary lies, to his king. Lya had been dead for some hours when he finally made it up into her tower room. The squalling of her babe, as dark haired as his mother, was the only sound. He had been wrapped up in swaddling cloth by the woman who'd been looking after Lyanna--her jailer or her companion, he knew not for she'd taken some kind of poison as he and Howland forced open the door. He would never know the truth of Lyanna's feelings in all this, nor what she had named the babe. If she'd even lived to hold him. 

Ned had held the child and wept until his head ached and pounded from it--knowing that it was Rhaegar's issue, knowing that if Robert ever learned of the babe that it would be killed for that alone. Most especially because it was evidence, true proof, that Lya had been dishonored by the Targaryen prince. Having Lya's blood would not save it. He had been prepared to call the child his son, conceived with a handmaiden of Ashara Dayne or some other lie from when he had not thought he would inherit Winterfell or even ever marry. Howland had saved him, though. 

"I never wanted Lya the way that Robert wanted her," the man had said, taking a knee in front of Ned, "I wanted her, to be sure, but it was an impossible thing for the Lord of Greywater Watch to marry the only daughter of Lord Stark. There is a mute girl at home who is trustworthy and loyal, I will make her my wife and have her raise the boy."

"What is her name?"

"Jyana, she has few to no marriage prospects. Fitting that the imperfect son be raised by an imperfect mother."

"What do you name him? His mother left him not even a tender hand upon his brow." Ned's voice was raw from weeping and he struggled to speak. 

"I name him Eddam Marsh."

A broken laugh ripped its way out of Ned's mouth at that, one that seared his insides with the wrongness of this day.

"Surely you will give him something easier to bear, he will grow up a bastard after all."

"All the more reason to give him something heavy."

"Jon, then, in memory of the Good King."

"I will never figure how you Starks ended up calling a king called Jaehaerys 'Jon,' Ned, I never will. But, yes, I will call him Jon. Jon Rivers. It was at Harrenhal in the Riverlands that we lost Lyanna, we just didn't know it yet."

* * *

 

Jon Rivers grows up quiet and kind, the image of his mother in more than body. He resembles his younger siblings very well save his dark blue eyes--and if a sunny day ever pierced the skies above Greywater Watch one might have been forgiven in thinking they were tinged purple. When he is sixteen Howland Reed tells him the truth of who his mother is and he weeps for days that his birth caused the realm to bleed.


	3. Jon Stone

When Ned Stark seemed not to return from Dorne the Hand of the King was sent to fetch him--or threaten the Dornish into surrendering him, should they be holding him captive. Jon Arryn was imposing as he rode into Kingsgrave with the intent on staying there a night before continuing on his search. In the castle, though, he found a shell-shocked Ned Stark already in the care of the Manwoodys. The boy and his friend had been the only survivors of the party that went to Dorne. 

They, and the infant that they'd found. 

"Oh, Neddy boy," he murmured, coming to sit next to his foster son. There was a dark haired babe resting on his lap, content for now it seemed to sleep soundly. There were dark lines under Ned's eyes when they finally met Jon's. 

"She died--I got there, and then she died." He reached a bracing hand to the boy's shoulder and held on through the sobs. The ravens that flew between the Eyrie and Winterfell had been numerous over the last few years--so many small notes exchanged by children growing into a young man and a young woman. Both who lost so much--everything, in a way. Ned had lost whatever free future he planned for himself, and his lovely sister had lost her life. 

"And this is..."

He let the question hang in the air and Ned gave himself away in the silence as he scrambled for an answer. He never could give a smooth white lie. A good quality in a second son, a bad one in the heir. Jon had never trained it out of him--why would he?

"He will go with me. We will call him your bastard, we will give him my name, but I will hide him for you in the Eyrie. Trust me Ned, just let me do this service for you. He shall have the Blackfish of House Tully to learn from, to become a man. You don't want to go home bearing this burden--and Catelyn will never have to see such a stain on her house."

And to Jon's great relief, and Ned's unending shame, he surrendered the boy and let him be raised as Jon Stone--the Stark bastard alongside the Baratheon bastard, fathered by fosterling brothers before the Rebellion.

* * *

 

Jon Stone is sixteen when, after he shames himself with Mya Stone, he learns he is to be a father. Neither are pleased with the development but are herded to the septon when they speak of it to Lady Arryn's uncle. The Blackfish does not support their cause, shaking his head and lamenting bastard blood, but grudgingly accepts that Jon ought to be allowed to write a letter to Lord Stark informing him of the development. Jon receives a short raven back, written in a woman's elegant hand, telling him he is disallowed from using Stark names for any of his mongrels but that his father expresses every other well wishing and felicity. It is signed by Lady Stark and no other.  


 


	4. Jon Hill

It was a terrible journey to Dorne, riding with the Kingslayer to rescue Lyanna. Ser Jaime said he owed it to his brothers to tell them they had a new king to obey and why that was. But at least he and Ned were of a similar age and each had been boiled by the war, coming out harder and tougher but also having lost something that could never return. 

The Kingsguard had not surrendered and were dispatched with at great cost to the party that had come with them--only Howland Reed and Jaime Lannister survived along side Ned.

Lyanna they found alive and her body whole and hale--but her mind was not. She had gone mad in the heat, or perhaps Rhaegar's madness was of the catching kind, and she paced about her tower room ranting madness. She was beyond reason--and she had a son. A little boy, maybe a month old, who she called Jaehaerys. When they could get her to pause, to look into their faces with anything like recognition it seemed to set in for her: the war was lost, the side she'd seemingly chosen had not prevailed, and she was the mother of a dangerous bastard. 

"Ned you have to save him, Ned, he's just a baby. He won't ever harm anyone, he will be good. Honorable. Perfect, he'll be perfect Ned."

"You can't promise such things, Lyanna, but we will keep him safe," Ned replied, holding her arms tightly in his hands. 

"He is the Prince Who Was Promised," she insisted again, "he was born of salt and fire. There was blood at his birth, and the midwife had to burn me to keep me alive. It is as the Prince said."

"Your prince is dead, my lady," Jaime Lannister said in a defeated voice from across the room, sitting on a trunk and staring at them with dull eyes. 

"He is not, he is a dragon," she shrieked at him, her madness flowing back into her like a wave from the ocean. Ned struggled to keep his hold on her. "He will come for me, he promised. He promised--the child would save us all. He promised me!"

Eventually after many hours she subsided and passed out on her meager bed. Jaime and Ned talked of what to do. She could not be trusted to be near the child: she had not hurt it, but her ramblings would not endear her bastard to a man like Robert Baratheon. There was no way to make her Robert's queen, either, not in good faith anyway. Robert might take her but would his kindness last in the face of madness in the woman he loved?

"I will say it is my bastard. We will go back, and you will cry havoc that I am honorless and deserve none of my white armor. He will listen to you, and I will take the child and raise him as a Hill. Jon Hill, the Kingslayer's bastard. My father will hate him, but if I say he is my blood that will settle the matter."

"You kill your king and now steal my nephew," Ned replied bitterly. 

"I killed a madman and will save an endangered infant. You will have quite enough on your plate, either having given the king a demented wife or having to constrain a mad sister. Besides, my father will trouble the realm less if he gets his heir back."

Ned felt tears spring to his eyes and tried to blink them away before they fell. He could not care for his family properly--barely a year as Lord Stark and already he was parted from his wife by war and was now pawning his sister's child away for convenience sake.

"What do we tell Lyanna?"

"Hide the child from her, keep it where she cannot see or hear or touch it--and then tell her it died. That it was sickly. They used to bind up the Mad King to encourage his sanity, Ser Barristan told me, and when he was a youth it seemed to work well--so bind up your sister in bedsheets every day until you reach King's Landing, and then marry her to Robert. The Grand Maester is a Lannister man, tell him she must be bound up if she starts speaking madness."

"Robert will tire of a mad wife and put her aside," Ned whispered, knowing in his heart of hearts what his friend would do. Lyanna would go to a motherhouse to contemplate gods she neither knew nor followed.

"And be seen the wiser for it--trust me, your king needs all the help he can get to be perceived as a wise man."

"Foster him at Winterfell."

"Too dangerous," Jaime replied, "if he looks like a Stark in his face the lie will come out. Either he'll be accused of being your bastard or the lady's indiscretions will come to light. He will go to my father's man, Addam Marbrand if he is still alive in a dozen years. No one sees Starks in the Westerlands, so no one will put it together to his detriment."

By the time they, separately, reached the capitol though Robert had taken Lady Cersei Lannister to wife and she was already with child. He readily cast Jaime out of the Kingsguard, and mourned for Lyanna while she rambled about red stars and salt. The Kingslayer collected his "bastard" Jon Hill and rode hard and fast for Casterly Rock.

* * *

 

Jon Hill, the Kingslayer's Bastard, grows up dutiful and loyal to his father and to the Westerlands. His existence puts Lord Tywin, his grandfather, in an awkward place shortly before Jon's sixteenth nameday--while Ser Jaime had married, and married well, he never sired another child. Meanwhile, Lord Tyrion Lannister was married to an ugly Frey and fathered six wayward trueborn children. Jon offers to remove the problem by attempting to join an order which demands renunciation of one's real or imagined claims--a maester's chain, or the black cloak of the Watch, or the white one of the kingsguard--but Lord Tywin instead pays King Robert to have him legitimized and that is the end of the discussion. Jon’s son, Daeron, is born six years later with hair like spun starlight.


	5. Jon Flowers

Ned still had nightmares of Lya dying in his arms, her desperate wish for him to protect her son. The last son of the family that murdered their own. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. Ever. Howland stayed behind in Kingsgrave to recover his strength and to wait for the Silent Sisters to finish preparing Lyanna's body in the southron fashion. The northron way was impossible this far south. So Ned slowly headed homewards, intending to pick up Catelyn at Riverrun and deal with whatever falling out she had to offer him. He was claiming a bastard, after all, after promising her he would not. 

That had been the only thing she asked of him: to have stayed true to her when he returned. It was a bad vow to break, he knew. 

On the roseroad he encountered Lord Leyton Hightower, the older man also returning from Dorne with his uncle Gerrold's bones. The man invited Ned to camp with them for the night, asking animated questions about the babe. He had a number of children and enjoyed bouncing a child on his knee. Jon was not yet old enough for such but he took to the Hightower like a bird to water. 

"I do not know what to tell my wife. I can't come home having betrayed her, but I owe his mother a promise to ensure he is well looked after," Ned blurted out eventually after another cup of sweet wine was pushed into his hands. 

"You Northmen take in your bastards, like Dornishmen do, don't you?"

"Yes, at least pay for the child’s upkeep and allow their wife to know of it."

"You slew my uncle," the Hightower accused, without malice, "I shouldn't offer you any advice. But I shall."

"Technically Lord Dustin slew your uncle," Ned offered sadly. 

"I thank you for the honesty. I say this: call him your near mistake. You went to betray your lady, you had even put the coins on the table, and instead heard the grizzling of a child. Your heart is tender from losing your sister, you want to foster the whoreson. I have six cousins from Ser Gerrold that are called my father's fosterlings. Smallfolk he raised up out of his own kindness and open heart."

"Catelyn will not believe that, she saw how green and uncertain I was at our bedding."

"She is not all-seeing, all-knowing, boy, nor is she one of your magic trees. Let me help you: delivering my uncle’s bones you found me with his latest fosterling and this is a duty I ask from you in return for his death. It is too painful to look on the boy, knowing that my uncle will no longer bring good deeds to the destitute. Call him Gerrold Flowers, Jon for a nickname. The worst that happens is she does not believe you--have her write to Lady Hightower, then, and I will instruct my wife to confirm the tale."

Ned stared at the older man with his mouth agape before finally collecting himself. 

"Why are you doing this? Northmen slew your kin. This could be Rhaegar's bastard for all you know."

"It certainly isn't his bastard, Lord Stark," Lord Hightower cut back, "he married her, he intended on crowning her alongside Princess Elia as a second queen. There are records of the marriage in the Hightower, sent by raven from Dorne. That child is a trueborn Targaryen--and you are perhaps the only man in Westeros who carries no grudge or hope because of that. Even I have hopes attached to the fate of that babe."

"Then why do you not offer to take him?!"

"Because I would mold him into a southron's image of a lost prince. He must go with someone who loves him the way his mother meant him to be loved. Now turn in, Lord Stark, we will part ways at dawn."

Miracle of miracles, after a letter from Lady Hightower, Catelyn believed it and allowed little Gerrold Flowers--Jon Flowers, to his friends, to be raised in Winterfell as the future steward of the castle. 

______________________

Jon Flowers is accepted as a case of unfulfilled charity. Lady Catelyn believes the tale after an affirmative letter from Lady Hightower, telling of the babe Ser Gerrold had sent word of but whose fate was uncertain after his death. He is raised formally as Gerrold Flowers, named in honor of the one he owed his life to, but called Jon by those who love him. Until he is sixteen he is trained to succeed Vayon Poole, betrothed to the man's daughter to bestow a true name on him, when Lord Robb leads the North to war. It is then that House Hightower demands their rightful ward back--and once he is in their high tower he is told of the terrible truth. 


	6. Jon Storm

It was an insult to the Starks, in Stannis' mind, that Ned Stark was sent to Dragonstone to kill the last Targaryens while Stannis himself was sent to Dorne to search out where Rhaegar had hidden Lady Lyanna away. There was anger and grief in Ned Stark's face as he rode northwards away from Storm's End and confusion for Stannis that he was given the task he wasn't suited for. Ned Stark was no sailor, and Stannis Baratheon was no worried older brother. 

Dorne was miserably hot during the day, leaving Stannis lightheaded, and frigid at night which left him aching and exhausted every morning from shivering overnight. He stopped at Skyreach and baldly asked where Rhaegar had kept his woman--and the answer was just as bald, and for a few coins a guide was procured to what had been an old abandoned tower. The Dornish called it a welltower--built over and around a well, meant to provide protection and security and water. 

The dragon prince had boasted that it was to be his Tower of Joy, the guide said. The girl was about Stannis' age and was not warm in her words about Prince Rhaegar nor was she very warm to Stannis and his stormlander knights. But she was competant and Stannis could not ask for more than that.

When they arrived at the tower there were a trio of Kingsguard there waiting for them--Whent, Hightower, and Dayne. He told the guide to stay back and away--and to escape if somehow the Kingsguard managed to defeat Stannis and his men. The three best swordsmen of the realm aside from perhaps Ned Stark and Jaime Lannister, to be matched against ten stormlanders newly freed from being starved to death. Some might call that an even match but Stannis had been harsh in getting his men's strength back. They ate enough and they trained after they ate to build their muscles back. 

But more importantly to Stannis he had the law on his side. 

"Sers, you serve my brother, King Robert, now. Even if the Lady carries a child it is but a bastard and has none to sponsor it for legitimacy. Your princes are dead, as are your king and queen. If you raise your swords you raise them in treason."

It was the first time Stannis encountered the madness of fanaticism, for the three men drew blades and readied for a fight. It mattered not to them that the Targaryen cause was lost--they intended to defend Blackfyre blood above the hard-won claim of a Baratheon. He promised himself that along with denying the gods undue praises he would never fall victim to such foolishness as believing fables relayed from books of magic. To do so would be to dishonor the men who died in the fray that day--nine of his men were cut down before the last Kingsguard, Ser Arthur Dayne, fell against Stannis himself. 

As the knight's life bled out of him Stannis laid out Dawn on the man's body and put a limp hand over the hilt. 

"Take...take it back to my sister, the Lady Ashara, her son...her son will...strong enough to...have vengeance. Fire...blood."

"Those are not your words, Ser, but of a mad prince who abandoned you here. An honorless man, he was, but I shall deliver the blade to your kin with my own hand." Despite only clinging to life Ser Arthur managed to sneer and spit blood into Stannis' face. 

"Lose your hand, Ba-Baratheon," he managed before he shuddered and breathed his last. 

The climb into the tower was eerie, quiet and cloying with the scent of rose petals in oil as well as blood. Stannis and Davos, the smuggler who had come with him after saving the garrison at Storm's End, climbed quickly and forced the door on the chamber at the top--the hinges were pin barrell and were easily levered open. 

Inside a serving maid stood to the side of a small cot of a bed where Lady Lyanna Stark lay. The lady herself was unresponsive and staring slack-jawed at nothing, though she still struggled in a breath or two. The bedding was soaked with blood and her belly pulsed with contractions. Dying, then, of childbed. 

"Is the babe living?"

"If--if we cut her, milord, but it would kill her to do it."

"She is dying already, her weakness need not condemn her child." It tore at him to be so cold, and it warred with his honor to try to save a Targaryen bastard. Robert would box his ears for even considering it, but then again Stannis was maybe still a rebel in his heart. He had,not so long ago, stared down the Tyrell forces and chosen to starve to death rather than submit his castle to them while he drew breath. And the babe was innocent of its parents crimes, and would pay for them already with its mark of bastardy. 

Robert would kill the child after boxing Stannis' ears, though, for bearing dragon blood. 

"Let us try to rouse her first, give her the choice," Davos said, his tone direct and clear. The serving maid curtsied and went to her lady's shoulder and gently shook her a few times. There was no response, not even a change in her hitching breathing. Stannis growled and muscled his way forward, taking the lady's shoulders and giving her a hardy shake, then slapping the side of her face a few times. 

"Lady Lyanna, we must cut the babe out, my conscience would be easier if you knew it. My lady, my lady you are dying," he said, knowing he was brusque and unmannered but finding no sweet way to speak this truth to her. Lady Lyanna did not even moan or whimper, her eyes unresponsive. 

"There is no time, milord, the babe will die when she does and she is slipping away," Davos' voice was gentler than it had been before. 

She did not even scream as the dagger opened her, though her body shuddered with the pain enough that the maid and Davos had to hold her down. The lady died as they pulled the babe out, fresh waves of blood soaking through the bedding and dripping on the wood floors. It was dark haired like its mother, a son of House Blackfyre if there ever was one--having divided the realm and brought it to bloody war just for existing. 

It was poorly done to kill her without asking if she wanted to take the child with her to her northron gods. 

"What do we name it?" Davos could already read him like none other, it seemed, and knew what he planned to do before he even realized it. 

"A capricious thought is to name it for Robert, for its mother died here because of his war. But...it would be best not to cause him to think too much of her as he looks at the child."

"He is a lucky little fellow to have taken his mother's coloring. I knew a lucky fellow when I was a boy--a thick nest of curls on his head concealed that he'd lost an ear for thieving. Jardan, from the Alley of Rats down in Flea Bottom."

"Jardan," Stannis tested the name, misliking it for day to day use, "Jardan Storm, but those who love him call him Jon perhaps. It is simpler, less expectation attached to it."

"You'll raise him as your own then?"

Stannis shrugged, watching the maid continue wiping the babe clean of blood using the rose oil they'd smelled on the way up the tower. It was wasteful to use water for the task. 

"It will end Robert egging me about not seeing whores, at least, and encourage him to marry well since his heir has fathered a bastard boy."

They buried the bodies of the three kingsguard under stone cairns, each left in their armor so they could be identified later. The guide's horse was the least loaded and she agreed to let the serving maid ride with her while Stannis carried the babe. Davos was gentle and careful as he secured the body of Lady Lyanna to the back of his horse for the ride back to Skyreach.

* * *

 

Jon Storm grows up just like his father Stannis Baratheon, but some of his rigid understandings of the world are relaxed after he fosters away at Cape Wrath with Lord Seaworth when he is ten. The boy grows up not quite as sturdy as his father but shares the same dour face and faintly curled black hair. He is as handsome, many ladies say, as his uncle Renly Baratheon and will have his pick of gently born ladies whose fathers consent for them to marry a bastard. When he is sixteen his uncle the king dies and Lord Stark names Stannis Baratheon as King of Westeros--and Jon Storm is legitimized by his father as Prince Jardan Baratheon.


	7. Jon Waters

Ned demanded a private audience with the king when he entered the city, alone in the godswood of the Red Keep at dawn. It was granted with a little confusion but amiably enough. There had been a letter, a month ago, from Skyreach telling the king that the Lady Lyanna had perished. King Robert was still grieving her death, by all accounts Ned had heard as he made his way towards the city. 

The babe, never named by his mother, squirmed in the arms of the wetnurse as they waited and eventually the tall form of Robert Baratheon became visible in the foggy morning air. 

"What jape is this, Ned? Your wife swells with a healthy son, there was no need to steal a child from some peasant girl's arms."

"Robert it is no jape. This is...this is what Lyanna wanted. I know I said in the raven that she had died before I arrived but that is not true. She was clinging to life after...after what the Kingsguard did to her. This is her son, she wanted him to be yours. She..." the tears clogged his throat as he lied about his sister, lied about her wishes and intents, but there was no way to keep such a child secret. It had dark hair, true enough, but eyes that flashed blue and sometimes purple in the light. Robert would hear of or see the child and know its parentage. Lyanna wanted the child safe but there was no chance. 

"It is dragon spawn," Robert said flatly, though there was pain in his own blue eyes. 

"She said she was sorry she wasn't strong enough to...to stop it."

Robert's eyes squeezed shut and a howl escaped his lips as his hand went for his heart. It was a fine distinction to him, an unwilling wife versus against an unwilling lady, but he would only regard what happened to Lyanna as a rape. Even if in Lyanna's eyes to perform the marital duty for Robert would have been just as torturous. 

"Why did you bring this beast here? Don't you have any love for me? For her?" Robert walked away by a few paces, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and pulling it hard. He looked back at Ned when he started speaking again:  


"I could not kill her child, I could not keep him secret from you either--not when she begged the gods to make him yours, not his." Ned was not a good liar but Robert was not a good listener. Robert also did not think that his chosen brother would ever deceive him. To another man who knew Ned so well it would have been seen through in moments--but of those only Howland Reed and Benjen remained alive. 

They stood quietly then, and Robert took a few hesitant steps back towards him to look at the babe properly. Unless one knew that the child was of Targaryen get it looked well enough like a Baratheon. 

"I cannot stand to look on him, no, I cannot. Not every day. But--Ned would you raise him? I will take all dishonor for fathering him, tell any lie you will about his mother, but...but he cannot come up here. Call him Jon, for Jon Arryn. Without him the dragon would have kept hurting her, would have kept her locked up and making her his whore. Please, Ned, I can't do it."

It was a good enough answer--and Catelyn probably wouldn't like to raise the King's bastard next to her own trueborn children but she would do it if asked--and Ned acquiesced to his king's request. They named him Jon Waters, son of the King, and Ned took a hired wetnurse with him to the North. Many other lords looked at the king in some askance as he made so many men help raise or shelter his bastards, but few made their feelings more known than that.

* * *

 

Jon Waters is sixteen when his father dies and the new king, his own younger brother King Joffrey, orders that he and all his bastard brothers and sisters be put to death. Lord Stark, both Lord Baratheons, and Lord Tyrell all immediately rebel, refusing to surrender King Robert's bastards. It is like Robert’s Rebellion never truly ended, another mad king demanding the deaths of innocents for imagined crimes.


	8. Jon Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am a Dorne fangirl. If you read my other stuff that will quickly become apparent so...if this isn't to your taste you may want to stick to my non-Dornish stuff that is posted! I hope that you enjoy this, though, it was my favorite to write after possibly Jon Rivers and Jon Storm.

The smell coming from the tower was horrific, but Oberyn and his Manwoody cousins persevered in trying to gain entry to it. There was the weak cry of an infant coming from the highest windows and they would be damned men if they allowed a child to die in such a way. The drought had been horrific in the Red Mountains, even the few artesian wells in some of the draws had gone dry or lost all their vitality. Doran had instructed Oberyn to ride throughout the mountains and take assessment of the damages and loss of life. It was their only luck that the forests in these mountains had never truly grown back after the arrival of the Targaryens three hundred years before. 

There were no longer columns of fire and destruction that ripped through the mountains in deep fall droughts, for a column of fire could not be sustained on scrubland alone. 

They had come upon this tower this morning and Oberyn had realized what it was. What it truly was. 

Rhaegar had taken his little lover here and went off to die. None had returned for them--and likely they were either weak, dying, or dead in the tower for the wells in this pass were all bone dry. Dorne had perhaps punished the dragons one last time. 

"Oberyn, perhaps we ought to climb it? I know it is high but Allard knows how to get a double rope up and there are enough of us to counter-balance one man and a...and a woman, maybe."

Wearily Oberyn nodded in agreement to his cousin's plan and trudged back to the horses to get rope. Rock climbing and pulley systems were common place in Dorne to rescue people from rock slides, sand dunes, and to get people out of wells when new ones had to be dug or old ones needed to be dredged.

They all knew that for whatever reason the baby was the only conscious creature up in the tower and may be the only survivor. 

Rhaegar's bastard child. 

It somehow failed to stir anger in him, though, for it was not the child's fault its father was an honorless raper. It was not the child's fault that the realm had bled. That blame rested on its parents, one of whom was dead and the other...probably was as well. 

Oberyn wished somehow that it had been Lyanna Stark's brother who found this place, who had to go up into this building, but it was perhaps fitting that Eddard Stark had seen the horror of Elia's ruined body and babes and now Oberyn Martell would see the horror of Lyanna's ruined body and babe. 

"Shall we draw lots or shall it be Steffon since he's the lightest?" Hectar Sand said as Oberyn walked back to the group, rope slung over his shoulder as he did so. Everyone murmured it ought to be Steffon--he did not weigh enough to make a difference in the counterbalance team and they would be able to support more weight if somehow the doors were not able to be opened from within.

"Is your stomach strong enough to do this, though, Steffon?" Oberyn questioned. "Only, the door might be blocked by some dead clods in Kingsguard armor."

"I can do it, cousin, there was a dead wellfort just south of Nightsong that we went to aid a few months ago. They lifted me above the wall then, too, and found twenty men rotting away there."

"Seven keep you and your nose safe then," Oberyn said as they watched Allard Manwoody lasso the rope into a double pulley, "and don't brag about such feats. If men find that out you'll be in high demand to fetch dead dogs out of wells and other horrors," he added, trying to keep his tone light despite the seriousness of their task. 

As predicted, Steffon dashed up the wall with the assistance of the counterbalance team and then carefully climbed onto the window ledge and into the tower. 

"A couple of dea--one dead woman," he shouted, "there's an unconscious woman, and a babe. Do you want me to go down and try the door or do you want me to attend to the woman and child?"

"Is the dead woman the only origin of the smell?"

"No, I think there are some down below."

"Then it would be best to try the doors," Allard shouted up. Steffon made an assenting noise and they heard no more from him for a few minutes. Oberyn and the others paced or kicked stones under their boots while they waited--and then cursing in Rhoynish alerted them to the fact he'd gotten down to the door. 

"You were right, Oberyn, a pair of dead Kingsguard. I--I think that one of them is Ser Arthur Dayne, gods, they've come a bit unraveled. Give me," a retching noise made it through the muffling of the door, "give me a few minutes to get back up to the window."

They backed up a few steps so they wouldn't have to crane their heads back to look up at the window. 

"Send up a water skin," Steffon called down and even from the distance they could see he was pale and sweating. "I need some, and perhaps some water might rouse the lady. The babe is also thirsty for milk and she may be able to nurse him."

"What is keeping the door shut, boy?" Hectar yelled, voicing the group's frustration with opening the door. They had not been able to figure out the method of how it had been shut aside from a door bar across the posts--Dornish holdings sometimes ran out of water and there were traditional methods of securing the holdfast or castle in ways that a Dornishman would be able to open the doors to provide aid, while keeping those inside safe from marauding Reachmen. 

"They chained one arm to one another and tied their other arms to the bar across the door. That's why it looked like a Hellholt Lock but wasn't opening like normal," Steffon replied after a hearty drink of the water they sent up to him, "because they sabotaged it. Dornishmen weren't meant to come up here, not through the door."

"Ser Arthur probably saw to that," Allard murmured to Oberyn, "he was ever choosing the Crown over his countrymen."

"He chose Rhaegar, though, for the Crown offered Rhaegar's woman no shelter."

"Do you need another man to go up there with you to move the dead?"

"I think I will be fine, thank you though."

"Boy, stop saying such things or you will name your own destiny," Oberyn yelled back up, a wry grin flashing across his face before he sobered a little, "did the water refresh the lady? How fares the babe?"

"She was able to take a little water, but she's not woken. The babe is only a bit ripe, which means he's eaten lately. I will be down in a moment."

The two Kingsguard were indeed Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Oswell Whent, each of them with three empty water skins a piece. They'd been dead for some time, only identifiable by the bat of House Whent and by the sword Dawn. Allard and Hectar carried the men out and set to digging graves while Oberyn and Steffon went upstairs to the little chamber. 

The dead woman was an older Dornishwoman, dead of dehydration it seemed and then only a few days before. The living one was Lyanna Stark, but she was not long for this world. First they carried the dead woman down and laid her out next to the two Kingsguard before returning for the other woman.

"Steffon, go back down and see if there is even a twig of a bush outside. If there is bring it back up here," Oberyn said softly when he realized how far gone the lady was. She was burning with fever, and her eyes did not respond at all even when he pulled the lids open to take stock of her reaction times. He pressed his hand down on her abdomen, still swollen from her child, and felt his heart break at what he felt. Part of the afterbirth was probably still in her, which meant her blood was poisoned. It would not matter how much water he plied her with, she was already condemned by a botched delivery. 

Steffon returned, a bit breathless, with a sizeable branch of a bitterbush. It was about the length of his forearm and for a moment Oberyn wished he had essence of bitterbush with him--of all things, bitterbush essence fought back diseases like malaria and other sicknesses of the blood. Even a tea made with the leaves and bark might be soothing at this point. 

"Is--is she going to make it?"

Oberyn shook his head, cradling Lyanna into his lap and putting the branch into her limp hands. 

"She was badly treated during birth and will die of the blood poisoning. It is amazing she has clung to life so long already," he said softly to his younger cousin, "it does not matter what we give her, there is no treatment for what she has." Turning his attention more fully on the woman, barely out of childhood really, Oberyn murmured to her in a barely audible voice:

"Your troubles are ended, my lady, your son will be safe. He will grow up strong and safe here in Dorne, none will wish him harm for your sake. He will be raised as my own son," he said in as comforting a tone as possible. 

"Jon," it came out as almost more of a moan than a word, "Jaehaer--, but...Jon, want..." the lady's fingers spasmed and clutched at the bitterbush stick, and her eyes fluttered as she tried to open them. It seemed Starks were hard to perish, he thought with a sadly amused smile that didn't reach his eyes. 

"The maesters will name him Jorrell, after my father," Oberyn countered, "but all who love him will call him Jon, for it was his mother's wish."

"Don't w...nt t..go," she managed, trembling now.

"None do, sweetling, but if there are seven heavens then surely you will find your family among them--and your old gods are with you," he rested his hand gently on top of hers where they clutched the branch. Steffon stood away from them, paralyzed by what he was seeing. The boy had seen plenty of death in his short life, but he'd never nursed someone through this. Probably never seen someone dying in any manner let alone this one. 

"W...winterfell, I--I wanted...go home."

"You shall go, in all finery and state as House Martell can afford, sweetling. Steffon, bring the babe close." Once the infant was brought to him he quickly unswaddled the child and laid him on his mother's chest, his head tucked under her chin. 

"Rest, sweetling, all will be well. Your grief is over."

They sat that way for another few hours until Lyanna breathed her last--and when her chest failed to rise her son let out an unearthly shriek at her loss. He could not be soothed, his tiny heart broken and he couldn't even comprehend why. Oberyn handed the child to Steffon to take down and to send for the other two men. Then the four of them wrapped the lady in the last of the bedclothes and carried her down as well. 

"None of you shall speak of the babe we've found, if he is found the Usurper will have him killed. From this day he is my natural son Jorrell Sand. His mother was a young washer woman who died in childbed."

"You have many exploits and shocking adventures, Oberyn, but you are not the kind of man who takes in his bastards," Allard said pointedly, poking holes in the strength of the story. 

"Then I shall become the kind of man who takes in his bastards. There is one in Oldtown that I know of, and another given to me by a septa. Let's see," he held up a hand to start counting them off, "there's the lady from Volantis, and there is also the daughter of a Summer Islander pirate and...I may have gotten a bastard on Lord Uller's bastard daughter, I will have to check."

The men swore and cursed his cock and his pretty face--the combination of the two no doubt contributing to the litter of bastard children he seemed to have. It would be a good, solid lie, they all decided and went to work burying the two kingsguard and the dead Dornishwoman before tying the body of Lyanna Stark across the back of Allard's horse while Oberyn himself held the babe to his chest for the ride back to Kingsgrave. 

There he wrote a letter to Winterfell telling of the discovery of what appeared to be Lyanna's body with a note that he would send her bones home in the same manner as Elia's had been delivered to him--in quiet state, respectful but not so ostentatious as to draw unnecessary attention. He wrote that she seemed to have died in childbed, locked in a tower alone. 

A wet nurse was found for little Jon, and Oberyn told her that the dead woman had been his lover who died--it explained his care of her body, it explained the newborn, and she was to be paid enough not to care about further details.

* * *

 

Jon Sand is known in Dorne to have his father's glinting eyes and beautiful hair but the rest of his body shows that he was bred by a washer-woman: stocky and strong coupled with graceless ease, unlike the lithe and defined way his father and trueborn family moved. He is a neat bookend among his father's bastards: Obara, Nymeria, Tyene, and Sarella were all born when Oberyn Martell was wild and careless. Then Jon came, born amidst blood and death, and whose birth sobered the Red Viper. Then came the four children by Ellaria Sand, all now named as Jon was for members of his immediate family. There was Jorrell--Jon--followed by Elia, Obella, Dorea, and Loreza. When Jon is sixteen he goes with his father to King's Landing and on the last night in the city he steals the king's betrothed, Sansa Stark. 


	9. Jon Targaryen

Ned had watched Prince Rhaegar fight to stand up in his water-logged armor, horror screaming in his gut and trying to shout a warning to Robert to back away a step-- stand back, Robert, stand-- and then the Last Dragon put a short sword, Dornish-forged, in Robert's throat. And then Ned couldn't hear anything, not even ringing in his ears as the body of his sworn brother fell into the Trident. The prince took off his helm and pointed his bloody sword directly at Ned, shouting over the din of battle:

"It is over. Your sister is married, legally, and my father will be punished--the Starks will have justice and honor, on the life of your sister and the child she carries, I swear it."

So Ned believed him, and called his men to heel just as the Prince did the same. His heart beat fast as he looked up at Prince Rhaegar who walked towards him. Robert's body was pinned to the riverbank from the weight of his armor, the fast moving river doing nothing to move him. 

"I swear to honor my sworn vassals all of my days, I swear this by the old gods and the new, as Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Protector of the Realm. I demand today, Lord Stark, your fealty as Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell."

And so Ned bent the knee, swearing as Lord Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell, and Warden of the North. Similar promises were wrung from the Tullys, the Arryns, and from Prince Lewyn of Dorne on behalf of his nephew Prince Doran. They did not beat the Lannisters to the capitol and the crisis of succession never reared an ugly head--King Aerys was slain by his own kingsguard, Ser Jaime Lannister, after the man burned Rhaegar's children in an attempt to make them dragons. Elia survived but only because she’d been locked away in Maegor's Holdfast after her children were ripped from her arms. 

Watching them reunite made Ned regret his decision to believe that Rhaegar had seen Lyanna properly wed. The newly minted King Rhaegar was ever-loyal to his wife, it seemed--but then he saw a private moment when Queen Elia slapped her husband, then slapped him again, and then again before storming away. 

Rhaegar caught a glimpse of Ned and came to him. 

"She mislikes that I will not risk her life again for my heirs, that I have taken a second queen rather than make her raise a bastard."

By the time they had wrapped everything up in King's Landing, ensuring that Prince Lewyn was installed as Hand of the King, it was a month gone from the Battle of the Trident. Ned rode with the King towards Dorne where Lyanna had been hidden away for the last eighteen months. A sense of dread overtook him, though, and reminded Ned of the dread he'd woken up to the day Father and Brandon had been murdered. There was no way he could have known they were in danger, just as he could not know what his sister was going through, but he had still somehow  known . 

The tower, the Tower of Joy as King Rhaegar insisted they call it, was an ancient old watchtower. Probably left over from the days just after the Targaryens had first tried to take over Dorne--there had been a massive rebuilding effort, if Ned recalled his history right. 

"Prince Rhaegar, you are--forgive me, your grace, you must go up at once with all haste!" Ser Gerrold Hightower called as they crested the ridge and started to ride down into the small draw. The King urged his mount to go a little faster, the rest of the party following him. As they neared the tower Ned understood why: a woman was screaming in agony from somewhere inside.  Lyanna . 

"The Princess has been brought to bed, but the midwife says the babe--"

"Damn what she says," Rhaegar snarled as he took the steps two at a time, his silver hair whipping behind him as he climbed. Ned followed him closely, for it was his sister that was locked away here. He would see her, see that she'd been kept safe as Rhaegar had promised on her life she was. 

The scene inside was ghastly. The bedding was stained with sweat and blood, Lyanna laying with her legs off the edge of it as the midwife tried to coax the babe out of her. Blood dripped steadily down to the floor from between her thighs, held open by two servants against the strain Lyanna was using to try to push the child out. 

"It is backwards, milord, we had to cut some to get even this much of the babe out," the midwife said without taking her attention off her charge, "and she labored for a day before one of the knights came to fetch me. She's very weak."

"R-Rhaegar, my prince, I am scared," Lyanna managed to say, her voice torn to shreds by screams. The King went to her side, taking her hand in one of his while his free hand smoothed down her cheek. 

"All women are, you shall do fine, my lady. You are the mother of my child and only strong women are able to carry Targaryens." He kissed her hand, then her temple, her cheek, and Lyanna quieted in his arms. Ned felt a surge of relief at the scene but it quickly dawned into horror as the midwife asked her charge to push and received no response--not even at a more urgent instruction did she even twitch. Rhaegar was too tied up with stroking her cheek to notice, either, that her hand seemed to go limp in his grip. 

"She's died--Seven save us, pull up the gown, pull it up," the midwife suddenly cried after putting her hand to the back of Lyanna's knee to feel her pulse, "the babe can still be saved if we cut him out."

"Died?! She is warm in my arms, woman--Lyanna, Lyanna wake up, look at me. Sweet lady, look at me--please,  Lyanna!" The King was frantic as he tried to rouse her, shouting that no one would touch her--she would bear the child just as his other lady wife had borne her own, that Targaryens took too much of their mothers and not to worry--Targaryen children did not kill their mothers. 

"My king," Ned found himself saying through his shock, barely hearing his own voice, "my king let them save your son. You must have an heir. Think of the future--"

"I am thinking of the future," the King roared, "how is the Prince to fare without a mother? How is he to learn ice from fire?" It made no sense to Ned but he realized that the King was no longer in control of his faculties and drew his dagger out, expertly flipping it to use the butt of the blade as a makeshift hammer and knocked the king out in a single blow. 

"I am the lady's brother, and head of her House besides. If she is dead cut--" his throat seized up on the word but he choked it out, "--cut the babe out. The King is too aggrieved to be rational and we cannot let the crown prince die as well."

Lyanna did not even twitch as the midwife took Ned's dagger and expertly opened her belly, pulling a quiet babe from her and quickly cutting the cord. The child was a little stranger to Ned, with hair of his mother's coloring but his body was slight and long--very unlike how he remembered Benjen and Lyanna herself as babies. How fitting that the child of a Southron would be born out of death and resemble no one Ned now knew. The Stranger, Catelyn had called the skeleton statue in the sept of Riverrun when he had asked. The god of Death.

When Rhaegar awoke he tried to attack Ned but his strength was sapped--he was a father once more, and his attention was dragged to Lyanna's son like the tide following the moon. 

"I will call him...what was the North's favorite king?"

Lyanna was wrapped up in Rhaegar's black cloak, laid out on the ground next to where he sat. Ned had laid Ice over her, knowing that she had always wanted to try to wield it. Perhaps the old gods would let her lift a ghostly copy of it if it were near enough to her now. 

"Bran the Builder is a popular one, but I think you mean of your own house." Rhaegar's mouth twisted and he gave a half-nod, "then we loved the Old King the best, he and his wife showed us much favor during their reign. Queen Alysanne's tower still stands in the North." He omitted that the tower was mostly abandoned, but it still existed. 

"Jaehaerys, then, the Third of his Name. For my grandfather and for the Old King."

"Lya would have insisted on calling him Jon, no matter what you told the maesters to record him as."

"Jon, then, for those who love him." Ned found it in himself to give the King a smile in return. It was weak, and bitter, but Rhaegar did not ask for more from him.

* * *

 

Jon Targaryen took the throne when he was sixteen, betrothed to his distant cousins Shireen Baratheon and Alys Karstark. His father had abdicated and went to journey North of the Wall--a journey he did not expect to return from, intending to find the top of the world and whatever secrets might be held there. Jon was crowned Jaehaerys the Third of his Name of the House Targaryen and was later known as The King of Spring as he defeated the dead who swarmed down on Westeros from the far North and was the king who brought back the dawn. He never married the wives his father picked out for him, naming instead the child of his aunt Daenerys Stormborn to the throne and then upon the child's sixteenth birthday sailing west on the Sunset Sea never be seen nor heard from again.  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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